Alphabet's Eric Schmidt is super excited for Andy Rubin's Android phone

Android’s co-creator Andy Rubin recently revealed that his company Essential is working on a new smartphone. Rubin teased a picture of the handset on Twitter a few days ago and Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has now also declared his interest in it.

In a tweet, Schmidt referenced “phenomenal” new Android phones arriving “very soon” with a link to Rubin’s original tweet about the device. This confirmed the speculation that the device is indeed an Android phone and also indicates that it’s close to release.

While it’s not exactly surprising that Schmidt would be talking up Rubin’s new project, they had both worked together at Google for many years, the timing of the tweet is noteworthy.

Schmidt’s comments arrived only shortly after Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event yesterday. There, the latest flagship phones from Android’s largest handset manufacturer, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, were launched. You might have thought that the phenomenal new phones Schmidt wanted to publicly praise were Samsung’s.

Rubin’s new phone, meanwhile, appears to have an end-to-end display, but little else is known about it currently. Read what we do know about it so far here.